‘Nah … it’s just …’
‘What?’
‘Well, I don’t think you’re supposed to eat anything before surgery, you know?’
‘Oh … yeah.’
‘Smells good, though. Is that marmalade?’
‘Orange marmalade.’
‘Yonks since I had marmalade on toast. OK, then, maybe a slice.’
Later.
The car deck.
Drivers inside. Engines idling. The Mersey splaying itself against Liverpool’s drab skyline.
The boat docks in a grind of gears and backwash. Heavy grain fog. Greasy rain. Cannibalised hulks lying like dinosaur skeletons on Birkenhead. Deserted pubs and run-down hotels and failing seamen’s missions. Ancient cranes standing like gibbets over abandoned docks. A city in decline since the outlawing of the slave trade and the embarrassed, hasty retreat from Empire.
We drive off the boat and I’m immediately lost. Cobbled streets, blind alleys, streets that end abruptly at rubbish-filled docks.
I get out the Britain Road Map book, but there doesn’t appear to be a Liverpool section which tells you something.
‘Do you know where you’re going?’
‘Uhm, not really, I need … I think the city centre must be that way.’
But it isn’t. Not on the road I’m taking us.
Rows of empty docks and warehouses. Post-Heseltine surrender. Eyeless houses, boarded-up shops. Belfast’s got a war going on, what’s the excuse here?
‘I’ve got a map, got it at the Women’s Advice Centre at Queen’s.’
I park. She unfolds it. The abortion trail, clearly explained and landmarked. A dotted line leading from the docks to death and back again – at least, that’s the way it reads to me.
‘There’s a couple of places you can go but me mate Chrissie says the Queen Alexandra is your best bet for outpatients. Fewer Irish nurses giving you the evil eye.’
Down at the bottom of the map, I can see the Queen Alexandra Women’s Hospital, a blocky Victorian building in smudged black and white, the grim end point for this counter-pilgrimage.
‘All right. The Queen Alexandra? Probably find our way there easily enough.’
She shakes her head, looks through the windscreen.
‘No. No, don’t start the car, Sean, we’ll walk.’
‘What’s the point?’
‘I want to walk, Sean. I want to get some air, first, OK?’
Never argue with a pregnant woman. Never argue with a pregnant woman about to become an ex-pregnant woman – an ontological and metaphysical disaster area.
‘I’ll have to find somewhere safe to park the car, I can’t leave it here.’
‘Then do that. Please.’
Car park near the ferry terminal. Fifteen quid a day. Rip-off.
I show her the map again. ‘Sure you want to hoof it? We’re here. Queen Alexandra is over here. No scale on this thing, but it looks like quite a hike. Right through the city centre and on to the other side, in your condition …’
‘I want to walk,’ she says, with dour finality.
‘OK, then, let me get the umbrella from the boot,’ I say, faux jaunty, ill at ease. Obviously.
Out of the safety of the Beemer into the greasy rain of Liverpool.
Up Water Street and the Queensway and Dale Street.
I recognise some of the women from the boat. Past St John’s Gardens and Wellington’s Column. Along the London Road and Pembroke Place. This is the Great Abortion Trail walked by thousands of Irish women and girls every year. Along the way there are women’s health-information kiosks and women’s drop-in centres and – in radical juxtaposition – horrific posters of aborted foetuses outside the many chapels and Catholic charity shops.
Outside the strange Christ the King Cathedral there is what looks like a semi-permanent encampment of elderly anti-abortion protestors. Some of them are in wheelchairs and some are attempting to play musical instruments.
Many are carrying giant pictures of beheaded babies that you hope are fake.
‘Let’s get away from here,’ I say.
Down a side street.
‘I need a cup of tea.’
Greasy spoon called the Cyprus Café. Chequerboard floor, wonky plastic tables. Beth looking really lovely today. Her black hair tied up in a ponytail. Her green eyes freaked out and vulnerable. Her cheekbones softened.
Radio on in the background. Local Merseyside station. Good stuff. In the time we’ve been in here they’ve played Sonic Youth, REM and the Sugarcubes.
Reviving me a little. Giving me hope. Music can do that. It can lift you out of the present, or perhaps take you into an alternative present.
A present where Beth didn’t get pregnant or where Ek didn’t escape the jurisdiction or where Tony didn’t have to die.
‘Come on, we better get moving,’ she says.
She puts on her coat and we go outside.
‘This way, I don’t want to go past the cathedral again,’ I tell her.
My palm being squeezed.
‘I’m scared,’ she says, her voice breaking.
‘Everything’s going to be fine, really it is.’
‘I’m really scared.’
‘Honey, it’s going to be fine.’
Bodies are dialogues. We tell each other stuff without a word. Her look into my eyes is all trust and faith. She manages a little grin and I kiss her lightly on the forehead.
Finally we make it to the Queen Alexandra.
A redbrick Edwardian façade. Age-blackened. Mossy. Iron bars over the windows. An air of gloom.
‘Are you sure this is the one that your friend recommended?’ I ask her.
She nods. ‘This is the one. Definitely.’
Up the steps to Reception.
Forms.
‘Can I put you as my emergency contact?’
‘I would think so.’
Forms filled in. We wait. And wait.
‘This way,’ a nurse says, and leads us down a long, bare corridor.
Another waiting room. A No Smoking sign.
She links her hand in mine. I can see tears in her eyes. I’m about to say, hey maybe we should just split …
‘Elizabeth McCullough?’
Beth gets up and nods. She takes off her raincoat and hands it to me. She’s shivering in her sweater and jeans.
Another nurse leads her through a set of double doors. I attempt to follow, but the nurse – if she is a nurse – shakes her head.
Back to the waiting room. The No Smoking sign.
I’m the only one here. Rain outside again.
A pile of magazines on a small, square coffee table: Woman, Woman’s Own, Cosmopolitan, Just Seventeen, Jackie …
There’s a folded-up copy of the Sun on a chair near the double doors. A couple of years from now, in the wake of the paper’s Hillsborough coverage, you won’t be able to get the Sun anywhere in this part of Liverpool. But that’s in the grim tomorrow and we’re still in the grim today.
Back to Reception.
‘Is there anywhere I can smoke?’
She nods. ‘Smoking room’s just in there, to the left.’
An airless cubby, packed full of doctors, nurses, patients, husbands and boyfriends. You don’t even have to light your own. A whiff of the air in here.
Back down the corridor to the waiting room.
Another bloke’s there now.
We steadfastly avoid each other’s eyes.
I pick up the Sun again. Read Mystic Meg. She claims Leo is going to come into money. I read the sport and the TV.
‘Done with that, mate?’ the bloke asks. He’s about 25, with a moustache, cords and geography-teacher glasses.
I pass him the paper. I wonder how long this is going to take. Should have done some research. I wonder what they actually –
Beth.
Standing there. ‘My coat,’ she says.
‘What?’
‘My coat. It’s raining.’
I give her the c
oat.
‘That was it? It’s over?’
She puts the coat on. ‘Come on. Let’s get out of here.’
We go outside and she walks briskly away from the hospital.
‘Beth, you’ve got to talk to me, what happened? Is it all over? Do you have to go back?’
‘Pub? Can we go to a pub?’
I find a pub and get her a gin and tonic.
She drinks it. Smiles. Drinks some more.
‘Fuck,’ she says. ‘Fuck me.’
‘You didn’t do it, did you?’
She shakes her head.
‘You’re not going to do it, are you?’
‘No. I’m not.’
I can’t believe it. Your actual tears. Don’t ask why, she might talk herself back into it again.
Is that a hint of a smile on her face?
‘Don’t think I’m going to be some awful hausfrau. I’m not. I’m getting a career. I’m going to be a career woman. You’ll be pulling your weight, Sean Duffy. Changing nappies. Everything. You know that?’
‘I know that.’
‘And wipe that stupid grin off your face.’
Back to the Beemer. Back on the ferry. Some of the same faces. Girls. Young women.
Changed for ever.
Older by a day. Wiser by years.
Ship pulling out. But the landscape …
The landscape has changed. This isn’t the ruined docks of Liverpool falling into the black Mersey.
This …
This is the place where the future begins.
32: THE HELSINKI TIMES (5 MONTHS LATER)
A violent summer in Ulster. Marching season. Disturbances. And during one riot in Carrickfergus someone takes the opportunity to steal my car. Livid doesn’t describe it.
‘Call Interpol! Pull out all the stops! I need that car for the hospital run!’
But joyriders love to play with a BMW and car thieves don’t care about terrified, expectant dads.
The riots are bad and it’s all hands on deck. Senior officers in short supply. Men with experience of crowd control …
Helicopter ride to the observation post on top of Divis Flats. Gap-toothed city sinking into the mud. The black lough lying there like a dead man’s mouth. Belfast as Gormenghast, Belfast as Fallen World, Belfast as Cursed Earth.
Glad to be above it. Above the petrol bombs and the half bricks and the bullets. And the words. Too many. Too much. In Ulster every tinker thinks he is the national bard. Words, words, words tripping off tongues like they are going out of style. Not even listening now. Heard it all before.
Weary …
This job. This awful job that makes great and continual demands on luck.
Maybe it is time to move on. Leave the cops to the coppers. Leave the robbers to themselves. Aye, if I was on my own … but I’m not on my own, am I?
A
A girl and a bairn on the way.
‘What are you grinning about, Duffy?’
‘I’m going to be a dad.’
‘You wait and see. It’s no barrel of laughs.’
Five hours later.
Riot duty over.
Carrickfergus Police Station. Safe behind the rocket-proof fence.
Safe in my office overlooking the lough.
It’s raining. Lawson peeking his head round the door.
‘Yes?’
‘Sir, some good news for a change.’
‘Good news? Are you sure?’
‘Yes, sir. It’s Killian, that car thief that we let off with a warning …’
‘What’s he done, now?’
‘He’s turned up at the station, sir. He says he found your Beemer. I looked at it. I think it is yours, sir. And not a scratch on it, by the looks of it. I had the bomb dogs go over it, too. Clean.’
Down to the car park.
‘Is that kid still around, Lawson? I’ll give him a finder’s fee.’
‘Oh he’s gone, sir.’
‘I think I’ll take it for a spin to see if it’s OK. Wanna come?’
‘You’re OK, sir.’
Wise lad. Knows me of old. On the run to Whitehead and back I hit an even ton past ICI. Back to the station. Pause at the break room to make a cup of tea. Almost six o’clock now. Shift nearly done for another day.
‘What’s the word, Crabbie?’
‘Where have you been, Sean? There was someone came to see you.’
‘Yeah, that kid. He found my car.’
‘No, not him. Some English guy. Jack. He said he knew you. He was waiting in your office, but then he had to go.’
Into the office. Ash in the ashtray. The smell of cigarette smoke. And there, sitting in the middle of the desk, a neatly folded newspaper.
I unfold it.
The Helsinki Times – a full-colour English-language newspaper, published in Finland. Obviously a clue in there somewhere. Could it be the tedious lead story on the front page?
FINLAND TO APPLY FOR EEC MEMBERSHIP
Finland has always been a cautious player in international politics. The plan to form an economic community among the Nordic countries, Nordec, came to nothing in the early 1950s because the Soviet Union blocked Finland’s membership. Finland has resisted joining the EEC. All of this is about to change, however. In the early 1980s about 20% of Finland’s exports went to the Soviet Union. This sector has long been in decline and the government has been seeking new markets in the West. Government sources have told us that Finland, along with Sweden, will soon begin the process of applying for EEC membership. EEC membership is not, of course, just about economics. Finland will need to sign up to the Common Fisheries Policy, the Common Agricultural Policy, it will join the Council of Europe and it will need to negotiate a pan European arrest and extradition policy –
I put down the paper. Is that what he wants me to read? To give me hope that the Lily Bigelow case can be reignited somehow? In two or three years, after Finland has signed up to all the relevant treaties, we get a warrant together and go after Ek?
Knock at the door. Crabbie’s face. I hand him the paper. He starts flipping through it from the back. ‘Read that front-page story. I think my visitor was hinting that the Ek case could be brought back to life in a year or two.’
Crabbie shakes his head. ‘Bad choice of words, Sean,’ he says.
‘What do you mean?’
He folds the paper in half and points at a small story on page 17.
HUNTING ACCIDENT IN LAPLAND
A Mr Harald Ek, originally from the Aaland Islands, was accidentally shot and killed on Tuesday while hunting in the forest near Nurmes. Mr Ek, 65, had recently retired from the board of the Lennätin Corporation and was preparing to write his memoirs.
‘What do you think, Crabbie? A genuine accident, or did somebody top the bastard?’
‘We’ll probably never know, but it looks like he’s not our problem any more.’
I reach for the bottle of Jura and pour us both a celebratory measure. ‘I hope it wasn’t an accident. I hope it was delayed justice for Lily,’ I say between sips.
Crabbie finishes his whisky and fills his pipe. ‘You’re a hard man Sean, but in this case I may have to agree with you.’
We drink and talk and I dig out the file and type a brief coda to the case of Lily Emma Bigelow. When Lawson comes in I show him the paper. He says he’ll ask Constable Hornborg about it when he sees her next month in London.
‘You and Hornborg have stayed in touch?’
‘Sort of. Phone calls are dead expensive but we’ve written a few times. And we’re going to hang out in London next month, on my week off.’
‘Did you know about this, Crabbie?’
‘I try to stay out of people’s personal business if I can,’ he says.
Crabbie goes home and Lawson goes home and I wait for the inevitable phone call. It comes at seven.
‘Hello?’
‘Ah, Inspector Duffy, I take it you’ve read the Helsinki Times that I left for you.’
‘Yes. Was
Ek your work?’
‘A hunting accident. I think it’s best to leave it there, don’t you?’
‘If you say so.’
‘I do say so. A prudent man minds his own business.’
‘A prudent man, yes.’
‘You’d be surprised how fatherhood has the capacity to turn reckless men into prudent men,’ Ogilvy says. There is a chill in his voice. An unmistakeable menace.
‘What are you trying to say, Mr Ogilvy?’
‘With the death of Harald Ek, your case is finished, Inspector Duffy. The investigation into Kinkaid is being handled by the RUC Sex Crimes Unit. The Metropolitan Police’s Special Branch is handling the other more outlandish claims of this inquiry.’
‘So keep my nose out of it?’
‘Keep your nose out of it, if you know what’s good for you.’
‘Now you’ve torn it. I don’t respond well to threats.’
‘That was the old Inspector Sean Duffy. The new Inspector Sean Duffy has a baby on the way.’
Click.
Dial tone.
I stare at the phone for a long time.
I dial a number.
‘SCU, this is Trish.’
‘Trish, this is Inspector Duffy of Carrick CID. If she’s still in I’d like to speak to Chief Inspector Farrow.’
‘Hold, please.’
‘Farrow. What can I do for you, Inspector Duffy?’
‘In the Kinkaid case, you’ll follow the leads wherever they go won’t you, Farrow?’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘The Kinkaid inquiry. You’ll follow all the leads, won’t you?’
‘Of course I will.’
‘Even if they stretch all the way to England and back?’
‘Yes.’
‘Even if they involve the great and the good? Celebrities? Politicians?’
‘Are you so arrogant that you think that you’re the only competent policeman in Ireland, Duffy? Is that what you think? You know some of us can do our jobs without histrionics, without making waves or without having to shoot suspects in the chest.’
That’s a low blow. Tony had been a friend.
‘Are any of the boys talking at Kinkaid?’
‘You know no one’s talking but the place is closed and it’ll never open again.’
‘But if someone does talk. Tell me that you’ll believe them and you’ll follow the leads wherever they go.’
Rain Dogs Page 31